The Ford Barn

daveymc29 · 06-03-2018, 01:17 PM

So, here's the Ace electrician with a question for the experts. In "puzzled" I explained that my alternator quit on me for unknown reasons. A friend came by and we looked it all over visually and he told me to pull the little rectangular cap off the top rear of the alt. He put a screw driver between the two poles just exposed a and then I started the car to find that the ammeter showed a normal rate of charge for having just cranked the engine and a couple of minutes later it had returned to a couple of amps on the plus side, indicating to me that the alt. was now functioning properly after the momentary connecting those two poles. He told me that he had to connect one of those poles to the output side of his alt. on a car back a few cars, but he didn't know why or which one had to have the jumper (extra wire) to get it to self excite. We stopped and restarted the engine a few times and it seemed to work. Later I started it up and drove around the block, it wouldn't go into the plus side again. Any clues? What do those two poles do and if one needs to be connected to the feed line, which one is it? How do I tell one from the other?

06-03-2018, 01:17 PM	#1
daveymc29 Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2010 Location: Danville, CA Posts: 1,566	Puzzled two So, here's the Ace electrician with a question for the experts. In "puzzled" I explained that my alternator quit on me for unknown reasons. A friend came by and we looked it all over visually and he told me to pull the little rectangular cap off the top rear of the alt. He put a screw driver between the two poles just exposed a and then I started the car to find that the ammeter showed a normal rate of charge for having just cranked the engine and a couple of minutes later it had returned to a couple of amps on the plus side, indicating to me that the alt. was now functioning properly after the momentary connecting those two poles. He told me that he had to connect one of those poles to the output side of his alt. on a car back a few cars, but he didn't know why or which one had to have the jumper (extra wire) to get it to self excite. We stopped and restarted the engine a few times and it seemed to work. Later I started it up and drove around the block, it wouldn't go into the plus side again. Any clues? What do those two poles do and if one needs to be connected to the feed line, which one is it? How do I tell one from the other?